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Questions to ask your SEO Pro before signing the contract

Today, top rankings in Google organic search is as valued as a beautifully designed storefront. You do everything to reach the desired first page and outrank your competitors. Yet, in the majority of cases, it requires a lot of experience and time investment in website optimization, link building, content marketing and even more without any return. That’s why, while your business is growing offline, you are considering hiring a SEO agency. SEO professionals have all tools and experience to create a keyword core for your website, optimize your content and performance and lead your website to the rankings you deserve. But how to pick the right professionals? First of all, SEO is not about PPC advertising. If a company or individual is offering you to run paid ads and calls it “SEO,” your talk is over, wrap it up. Real SEO Pros know their craft and the questions below are to them.

Eight Questions to Ask SEO Pro

1. How long does it take to rank in Google?

There are no guarantees that you will be ranked high in three, for instance. You will definitely see some results like traffic or backlinks growth. If someone assures you that your website will be in top one month from now, cut short and pass on your website to another company. Any SEO work requires in-depth research and custom strategy development tailored to your niche.

2. What is your backlink strategy?

First off, learn the basics. We suggest starting with the search engine ranking score, or the domain authority (DA). The DA is an algorithm introduced by MOZ and used to predict how well Google will rank the website. Another essential factor is the Alexa traffic rank which allows determining how many organic users are visiting your site from a certain country. A trustworthy company will always use the authority websites with the traffic rank in your target country for link building.

3. How do you do on-site optimization?

A good SEO company always asks for the Google Analytics data. The best way to give them everything they need is to create a view of the website. Using native Google Analytics tools, the company will be able to check the most visited pages and measure their performance based on different factors which include but are not limited to bounce rate. Since Google values a solid user experience, the company will offer specific changes in the website front-end and backend.

4. What is your local SEO strategy?

If you are marketing globally, you shouldn’t skip this step! Local SEO can do a lot even for global business. Creating pages targeted to the location and registration in different business directories are a must for any company which would like to succeed online. Ask about the best lists, NAP (name, address and phone number,) and metadata.

5. How do you present reporting?

Before the contract is signed, you should be aware of how the progress will be tracked. Which data will be shown to you and how, how often will you get reports, etc. A good SEO agency is usually open to discussion and ready to unveil the tools and data sources they use.

6. How much time do you need to understand my business?

Never trust the company which needs an hour to understand your business or your business goals. Any digital marketing activity requires in-depth research and data analysis. A trustworthy company usually creates external and internal audits. The first one is about what they see without access to your data and the second one is after you give them access to it. They can start with Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, for example.

7. How do you do the keyword research?

Before even starting your strategy development, the SEO company takes a look at the keywords and offers the list of keywords for your website defining the competition level. It’s hard to compete with high traffic keywords and easier to get onto the top with the low ones. Usually, professionals use two main tools to define the keyword set: the first one is free that is Google Keyword Planner and the second one is paid, that is SEMRush to collect the keywords and their variations for your website.

8. What is your blog strategy?

The blog is not about SEO ranking for your homepage, it is about bringing more targeted traffic to your website. The goal of any blog is to educate about the issues faced by your potential clients which you are not able to discuss on the static pages of your website. “How to choose a SEO company” will be much more relevant for the blog than just “about SEO company.” If your future SEO partner focuses on your customers’ needs, this is the right team. As you see, picking up a trustworthy SEO company is not as easy as it seems to be. You should understand how SEO works before searching for the one. A lot of companies will promise you mind-blowing results, which are unfortunately impossible to achieve in any way. As a result, you have useless investments, money lost, website stagnation, or even worse, Google penalties. Choose wise and we hope these tips from WiserBrand digital marketing team shared with us will help you to pick the right SEO Pro!